David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

famous exhibition. If you tried to buy the
paintings in that warren of top-floor
rooms today, it would cost you more
than a billion dollars.
The lesson of the Impressionists is
that there are times and places where it
is better to be a Big Fish in a Little Pond
than a Little Fish in a Big Pond, where
the apparent disadvantage of being an
outsider in a marginal world turns out
not to be a disadvantage at all. Pissarro,
Monet, Renoir, and Cézanne weighed
prestige against visibility, selectivity
against freedom, and decided the costs
of the Big Pond were too great. Caroline
Sacks faced the same choice. She could
be a Big Fish at the University of
Maryland, or a Little Fish at one of the